NBC News aired the first news program in American broadcast television history on February 21, 1940. The group's broadcasts are produced and aired from the GE Building in Rockefeller Center, NBC's headquarters in New York.

The division currently presides over America's #1-rated newscast,[2]NBC Nightly News, and the longest-running television series in American history, Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. NBC News also offers 70 years of rare historic footage[3] from the NBCUniversal Archives online.

The first American television newscast in history was made by NBC News on February 21, 1940, anchored by Lowell Thomas and airing weeknights at 6:45 p.m.[4] In June 1940, NBC, through its flagship station in New York City, W2XBS (renamed commercial WNBT in 1941, now WNBC) operating on channel one, televised 30¼ hours of coverage of the Republican National Convention live and direct from Philadelphia. The station used a series of relays from Philadelphia to New York and on to upper New York State, for rebroadcast on W2XB in Schenectady (now WRGB), making this among the first "network" programs of NBC Television. Due to wartime restrictions, there were no live telecasts of the 1944 conventions, although films of the events were reportedly shown over WNBT the next day.

In 1948, NBC teamed up with Life magazine to provide election night coverage of President Harry S. Truman's surprising victory over New York governor Thomas E. Dewey. The television audience was small, but NBC's share in New York was double that of any other outlet.[5] The following year, the Camel News Caravan, anchored by John Cameron Swayze, debuted on NBC. Lacking the graphics and technology of later years, it nonetheless contained many of the elements of modern newscasts.[6] NBC hired its own film crews and in the program's early years, it dominated CBS's competing program, which did not hire its own film crews until 1953.[6] (by contrast, CBS spent lavishly on Edward R. Murrow's weekly series, See It Now[6]). In 1950, David Brinkley began serving as the program's Washington correspondent, but attracted little attention outside the network until paired with Chet Huntley in 1956.[7] In 1955, the Camel News Caravan fell behind CBS's Douglas Edwards with the News, and Swayze lost the already tepid support of NBC executives.[6] The following year, NBC replaced the program with the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Beginning in 1951, NBC News was managed by director of news Bill McAndrew, who reported to vice president of news and public affairs J. Davidson Taylor.[8]

NBC News had close to 700 correspondents and cameramen in 1961 who were stationed throughout the world. Film was received in the United States by plane or by the jointly operated NBC-BBC transatlantic film cable.

NBC's vice president of news and public affairs, J. Davidson Taylor, was a Southerner who, with producer Reuven Frank, was determined that NBC would lead television's coverage of the civil rights movement.[10] In 1955, NBC provided national coverage of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, airing reports from Frank McGee, then news director of NBC's Montgomery affiliate WSFA-TV, who would later join the network.[11] A year later, John Chancellor's coverage of the admission of black students to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas was the first occasion when the key news story came from television rather than print[11] and prompted a prominent U.S. senator to observe later, "When I think of Little Rock, I think of John Chancellor."[8] Other reporters who covered the movement for the network included Sander Vanocur, Herbert Kaplow, Charles Quinn, and Richard Valeriani,[10] who was hit with an ax handle at a demonstration in Marion, Alabama in 1965.[12]

While CBS's Walter Cronkite's fascination with space eventually won the anchorman viewers, NBC, with the work of correspondents such as Frank McGee, Roy Neal, Jay Barbree, and Peter Hackes, also provided ample coverage of American manned space missions in the Project Mercury, Project Gemini, and Project Apollo programs. In an era when space missions rated continuous coverage, NBC configured its largest studio, Studio 8H, for space coverage. It utilized models and mockups of rockets and spacecraft, maps of the earth and moon to show orbital trackage, and stages on which animated figures created by puppeteer Bil Baird were used to depict movements of astronauts before on-board spacecraft television cameras were feasible. (Studio 8H had been home to the NBC Symphony Orchestra and is now the home of Saturday Night Live.) NBC's coverage of the first moon landing in 1969 earned the network an Emmy Award.[13]

In the late 1950s, Kintner reorganized the chain of command at the network, making Bill McAndrew president of NBC News, reporting directly to Kintner.[8] McAndrew served in that position until his death in 1968.[8] McAndrew was succeeded by his executive vice president, producer Reuven Frank, who held the position until 1973.[8]

On November 22, 1963, NBC interrupted various programs on its affiliate stations at 1:45 p.m. to announce that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas. Eight minutes later, at 1:53:12 p.m., NBC broke into programming with a network bumper slide and Chet Huntley, Bill Ryan and Frank McGee informing the viewers what was going on as it happened; but since a camera was not in service, the reports were audio only. However, NBC did not begin broadcasting over the air until 1:57 p.m. ET. About 40 minutes later, after word came that JFK was pronounced dead, NBC suspended regular programming for four days and carried 71 hours of uninterrupted news coverage of the assassination and the funeral of the president—including the only live broadcast of the fatal shooting of Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, by Jack Ruby as Oswald was being led in handcuffs by law-enforcement officials through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.[14]

NBC's ratings lead began to slip toward the end of the 1960s and fell sharply when Chet Huntley retired in 1970 (Huntley died of cancer in 1974). The loss of Huntley, along with a reluctance by RCA to fund NBC News at a similar level as CBS was funding its news division, left NBC News in the doldrums. NBC's primary news show gained its present title, NBC Nightly News, on August 3, 1970.

The network tried a platoon of anchors (Brinkley, McGee, and John Chancellor) during the early months of Nightly News. Despite the efforts of the network's eventual lead anchor, the articulate, even-toned Chancellor, and an occasional first-place finish in the Nielsens, Nightly News in the 1970s was primarily a strong second.[6] By the end of the decade, NBC had to contend not only with a powerful CBS but also a surging ABC, led by Roone Arledge. Tom Brokaw became sole anchor in 1983, after co-anchoring with Roger Mudd for a year, and began leading NBC's efforts. In 1986 and 1987, NBC won the top spot in the Nielsens for the first time in years,[15] only to fall back when Nielsen's ratings methodology changed. In late 1996, Nightly News again moved into first place,[16] a spot it has held onto in most of the succeeding years. Brian Williams assumed primary anchor duties when Brokaw retired in December 2004.[citation needed] In February 2015, NBC suspended Williams for six months for telling an inaccurate story about his experience in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[17] The program is currently anchored by Lester Holt on an interim basis.

In 1993, Dateline NBC broadcast an investigative report about the safety of General Motors (GM) trucks. GM discovered the "actual footage" utilized in the broadcast had been rigged by the inclusion of explosive incendiaries attached to the gas tanks and the use of improper sealants for those tanks. GM subsequently filed an anti-defamation lawsuit against NBC, which publicly admitted the results of the tests were rigged and settled the lawsuit with GM on the very same day.[18] As a result of the controversy, several Dateline producers were fired and Michael Gartner was forced out as NBC News president.[citation needed]

On April 16, 2007, Cho Seung-hui, gunman in the Virginia Tech massacre, took time between the two shooting episodes to prepare and mail a large multimedia package to NBC News in New York City containing messages about his anger at the wealthy and alluding to the slaughter that was about to take place. Although the package was sent overnight mail, it was not received until 11 a.m. on April 18 because of Cho's confusion over the zip code of NBC's headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The package contained a DVD showing video clips of Cho speaking and more than two dozen photos of Cho, including 11 of him thrusting pistols at the camera. A postal worker delivering the parcel to the network's Rockefeller Center offices recognized the sender and alerted NBC security personnel. They immediately reported the package to the FBI. Meanwhile, NBC made copies of the contents and aired carefully edited pieces on its evening news and cable programs. Snippets from the package, including still photos, videos and voice narration, were also made available to competing news outlets who agreed to credit the network as the source. Then-NBC News president Steve Capus defended use of the material, but the frequency of its broadcast was cut dramatically.

On October 22, 2007, Nightly News moved into its new high definition studios, at Studio 3C at NBC Studios in 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. The network's 24-hour cable network, MSNBC, joined the network in New York on that day as well. The new studios/headquarters for NBC News and MSNBC are now located in one area.[citation needed]

NBC Nightly News broadcast, March 2008

On March 27, 2012, NBC News broadcast an edited segment from a 911 call placed by George Zimmerman before he shot Trayvon Martin. The editing made it appear that Zimmerman volunteered that Martin was black, rather than merely responding to the dispatcher's inquiry, which would support a view that the shooting was racially motivated. A media watchdog organization accused NBC News of engaging in "an all-out falsehood." While NBC News initially declined to comment,[19] the news agency did issue an apology to viewers.[20]The Washington Post called the statement "skimpy on the details on just how the mistake unfolded."[20]

By 2009, NBC had established leadership in network news, airing the highest-rated morning, evening, and Sunday interview news programs.[21] Its ability to share costs with MSNBC and share in the cable network's advertising and subscriber revenue made it far more profitable than its network rivals.[22]

Nine men have served as president of NBC News during its history: Reuven Frank (1968–73, 1981–85), Richard Wald (1973–77), Lester M. Crystal (1977–79), William J. Small (1979–81), Lawrence Grossman (1985–88), Michael Gartner (1988–93), Andrew Lack (1993–2001), Neal Shapiro (2001–05), and Steve Capus (2005–March 5, 2013). In August 2013, Deborah Turness assumed the role as president of NBC News, becoming the first woman to head the division.[1]

NBC News Radio broadcasts radio news headlines at the top of the hour, which have been distributed since 2004 by Westwood One, an independent radio network and syndicator.[23]

It is a revival of the original NBC Radio Network, which Westwood One purchased in 1987 as General Electric, which acquired NBC's parent company RCA, divested most properties not pertaining to the NBC television network. NBC Radio's news operation would be merged into the Mutual Broadcasting System, then into Westwood One's then-corporate sibling CBS Radio, and eventually assimilated into the syndicator itself. Initially just a service limited to one-hour reports from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET, on March 5, 2012, Dial Global – who had acquired Westwood One – announced NBC News Radio would expand to a full-time 24-hour radio news network, replacing CNN Radio (that itself replaced both NBC Radio and Mutual in 1999).

NBC reporters and correspondents also contribute to the Dial Global-produced, and "NBC Radio"-branded, newsmagazine First Light with Dirk Van, the lone surviving program from the original NBC Radio Network (Van is also an anchor for NBC News Radio).

NBC NewsChannel is a news video and report feed service, similar to a wire service, providing pre-produced international, national and regional stories some with fronting reporters customized for NBC network affiliates. It is based in Charlotte, North Carolina and is connected to the studios of Charlotte NBC affiliate WCNC-TV. NBC NewsChannel also served as the production base of NBC Nightside.

MSNBC is not shown outside the Americas on a channel in its own right. However, both NBC News and MSNBC are shown for a few hours a day on Orbit News in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Orbit News is network of three 24-hour satellite and cable channels offering exclusively American news programming from ABC, NBC, PBS, and MSNBC to U.S. expatriates and other viewers abroad, primarily geared towards an audience in the Arab countries. The network is available on digital satellite and cable in Europe, Middle East and North Africa, however, cable operators in Europe are currently unable to carry the channels due to unsolved rights issues.

MSNBC is also shown occasionally on sister network CNBC Europe during breaking news, and Nightly News and Meet the Press are also shown regularly. NBC Nightly News is shown in the Philippines on 9TV (formerly Talktv and Solar News Channel), while Early Today was officially dropped from the network in December 2013, but they replaced by the repeats of Inside Edition. NBC Nightly News, along with the full program lineup of NBC, was carried by affiliate VSB-TV in Bermuda.

The Seven Network in Australia has close ties with NBC and has used a majority of the network's imaging and slogans since the 1970s. Seven News has featured The Mission as its news theme since the mid-1980s. Local newscasts were named Seven Nightly News from the mid-1980s until around 2000. NBC and Seven will often share news recourses between the two countries. NBC News has been known to use Seven News reporters for live reports on a developing news story in Australia. Seven News will sometimes also incorporate an NBC News report into its national bulletins. Today, Weekend Today and Meet The Press are all broadcast on the Seven Network during the early morning hours from 3-5 a.m., just before Seven's own morning show Sunrise.

In the United Kingdom, the ITV network, used to air segments from NBC Nightly News on their ITV News at 5:30 morning newscast before it was cancelled in December 2012. NBC News share facilities and crew in the UK with ITN, who is the news provider for ITV.